Cesare Maestri

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First ascent.

Speaking in a latter to Mountain Magazine:

I read with amazement your letter of June 19th. I haven’t read the number of Mountain which you mention because I don’t understand English and also because I don’t follow mountain writing very much. But I can see from what you tell me that British climbers have not yet digested the fact that an expedition has succeeded on a route where they have failed twice. As you know, a Spanish expedition tried to repeat our South East Ridge with the admirable, though unsporting, intention of cleaning the wall of the Tower and removing all fixed ropes, but they barely managed to raise themselves above ground level. Knowing the technical ability of this expedition, and of the English ones, I was pretty sure right from the start that to reach the summit of the Tower in their turn the climbers would have to work really hard and have a good deal of luck at the same time. In fact, they only got up a few metres before retreating ’’because of the bad weather". Certainly they could only have got up a very short way if they failed to see that the exit on to the summit does not present any particular difficulty; being a normal ice slope without cornices or overhangs, at least when we went up it. I should have thought these men would have had sufficient knowledge of the problems of the mountain to realize that the conditions of a face vary from year to year and according to the weather conditions. If their technique was on a level with their incredulity they might have reached the compressor which we abandoned about 15 metres from the beginning of the final ice cap; if their technique was on a level with their vainglory they might even have got beyond our compressor to our final line of bolts. These I broke off in their holes, so that I would at least compel my successors to bolt those few metres, and so that I would not eliminate an important proof of our ascent. Knowing the purity and loyalty of the climbing world, I was concerned to leave obvious traces of our passage. If, one day, the English or the Spanish, aided by good weather, by their splendid form and by miraculous fortune, were to arrive in the vicinity of the summit, they would be able to by-pass the compressor, follow my broken-off bolts, which trend from left to right, and attack a snow-tongue which descends from the ice cap. They would then, with the aid of one or two ice pegs, arrive on the summit, leaving far away to the right those overhangs which terrorized them so much but which are not necessarily there every year. I hope that will clarify the position, though if I paid attention to all the idiots who invent stories all over the world I would have to spend my whole life on the Tower - which, as many have discovered, is a cold and uncomfortable place where only the strongest can survive.

I thank you for your interest in asking me to quell this doubt, but I refuse to give photographic evidence (which I have in plenty), because if the doubters themselves are not capable of reaching the summit I don't see why I should be the one to offer them the satisfaction of seeing it. This sort of satisfaction can only be obtained as we obtained it - by dint of technique, will-power, hunger, cold, sacrifices, resistance and frost- bite.

Let these gentlemen reach the summit and bring me down a piece of our compressor, because it is their job to provide the proofs which they expect of me.

Believe me, these doubts do not offend me; they sadden me slightly, but they render our achievement even greater and they reveal these 'Great Alpinists' as being small men. [2]

References

[1] Mountain 16 (1971), page 23 /library/9611/mountain-16

[2] Mountain 23 (1972), page 30 /library/9627/mountain-23